


now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white

by lotesse



Category: Angel: the Series, Vanity Fair - Thackeray
Genre: Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-06
Updated: 2009-10-06
Packaged: 2017-10-02 14:24:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lotesse/pseuds/lotesse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her savagery, hidden under the thinnest veneer of maidenly propriety, fascinated him utterly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white

It wasn't quite an alley, but the street was grey and dirty enough that it made little difference.

The house was one of ill repute, though not as dark as some - not a place of use and degradation, but nevertheless a hub of clandestine and improper trade. Angelus had found the place some weeks ago, and the bohemian pretense of the place amused him; how much more interesting were the daughters of stagehands and theosophists than the paler beauties found in more stable social classes!

There was one girl in particular that he found himself watching, a little slip of a thing with bouncing yellow curls and green eyes, who could not have been more than eighteen. There was a flatness to her voice, a cruel glint to her bright eyes. It so belied the sweet innocent openness of her face that Angelus, watching, sensed in her a creature not so unlike himself. Her savagery, hidden under the thinnest veneer of maidenly propriety, fascinated him utterly.

It would have been easy enough to open her pretty little throat and leave her cold, but something as yet stayed his hand.

One night, he found her waiting for him, draped elegantly over a chair in his accustomed place. "You've been watching me," she said. Her breasts were held up high in a thin red gown, and her curls were pinned up into a loose tumble.

"I have," he said, seeing no cause for concealment. The night hid many sins. "I thought looks were free, as of yet."

"They are here," she said with a cats' cream grin. "Though I hear they charge a dear penny in London nowadays."

"You should go there," he said, picking her up and settling back into the chair, broad enough to hold him and yet leave space in his lap for her. "You'd make several pennies, I think, and all pretty enough."

She cocked her head like a bird, all bright plumes and vicious claws. "And so I shall," she said, more a vow than a jest, "when the time comes. But for now, I am here. With you," she added pointedly, eyebrow raised gracefully.

"You're what? A flower seller? An opera girl?" he said, turning the words into little barbed jibes.

"A French tutor," she fired back, "at Miss Pinkerton's Academy. Though," she added with a sudden and somehow unassuming grin, "my mother sang opera, before I was born. So you're not so far off."

He moved closer, curled a lock of her hair around one of his fingers. "And here? Is this a part of your tuition?"

"No," she said, smiling now in earnest. "This is my home."

She smelled of gardenias and metal and cheap cosmetics, and he ran a caressing finger down her warm-skinned neck. He didn't know what held him back from taking her, either sexually or mortally - perhaps it was that he could not shake the feeling that this girl would be more interesting live than dead, speaking than servicing, though it was clear enough from the curl of her mouth that she was skilled between the sheets. "I've no need for brief satisfaction, but for some hours of your time and company I'll pay handsome coins indeed." He had ready enough finances, being not above plunder in addition to frequent murder, and her eyes had filled with need when he'd mentioned money.

"My company?" she queried, acerbic. "An interesting need, monsieur, and not a request I often hear."

"You interest me," he said at last. "Somehow, you seem very familiar, and that intrigue me." This was more than partially true - if Darla had ever been a sweet young thing, which Angelus privately doubted, she may have been not unlike this gilded knife of a girl. "What's your name?"

"Rebecca Sharp. Becky. And I shan't ask yours," she answered pertly. "By your voice you're an Irishman, and by your face you're not low born, but by your voice I should call you quite a wicked personage, for no virtuous man would ever speak so sweetly of buying and selling."

"By all three, you're in the right," he said. "I've a room not far from here, and a carriage waiting, if you would deign to accompany me."

She laughed, and followed him into the night with alacrity. He could not tell from her face if she felt no fear, or if she merely refused to acknowledge it.

*

He shivered at the touch of her cool hand across his marked shoulderblade; he could tell by sense-memory that her fingertips were engaged in tracing the elaborate looping scrollwork. "What does it mean?" she asked, and he was momentarily shocked by the sensation of her breath against his ear - he, who was himself breathless.

"It's a reminder," he told her, "of my name, and of sweet Kathy who gave it to me."

"The one with the angelic face," she breathed against him, and he felt an unaccustomed throb of longing in his dead heart, ineffable, inchoate. She was so young, and so wild, unbent even by her clear acquaintance with cages.

He left her laced into her stays, and thrust her face-downwards onto the bed, making sure as he touched his tongue to her cleft that she could never see his face. When he changed, the distorted vampiric visage forcing itself to the fore in the act of pleasure, she moaned raggedly; perhaps she sensed the difference, or perhaps she was merely lost in the rhythm of her own sensation.

Her quim clenched around him, soaking wet in the moment of her orgasm, and he brought her off once more when he finally took her, again from behind, still taking care that he remain hidden from her. She quieted before he came, lying still and disheveled among the soiled sheets.

"You are an intricate little puzzle, Becky Sharp," he said as he laid a hand on her exposed, delicate, vital backbone. She smiled tiredly, and her eyes took on a melancholy cast.

"Only a girl of little means, sir, like many others in the world." But then her voice snapped with revealed steel: "Though I do not mean to remain such."

He caressed her neck again, feeling her pulse thrumming beneath his hand. "Oh, you'll have the world and a jewel-box to put it in," he said to her. "You will glitter, and burn, and pay them all out in the end."

She rolled over then, and looked him full in the face; he permitted it, his own features having returned to smooth humanity. "Yes," she said, fierce and determined in her agreement, taking the compliment as her due. "I will."

She took his coin and carriage just as coolly, like any grand dame exiting a fete, and vanished into the dark in a whirl of scarlet and curls.

*

"I want her," Darla said, later, in their finer lodgings at the heart of the most fashionable district. She had been out; her deep blue gown pressed her breasts upwards, and her painted face both enhanced her own unnatural pallor and gave her the illusion of a warm flush. She was wearing jet beads in her hair, and the fire lit her face from below; she looked more inhuman than usual, and her red-stained mouth was curled in a greedy smile. "Oh, Angelus, we can go and take her, can't we? She sounds such a perfectly beautiful little monster - and you know how I've always longed for a daughter."

They would be little mirrors of each other, Angelus thought: pretty hair with jewels in it and predatory grins.

Darla, sensing that the silence had lasted too long, began to pout. "Why not?" she said, not needing to be told. "Have you grown soft? Is there some reason why you've held back from making her this long?" Her voice was a slender needle, searching for a weak point, a way to cause pain.

"There would be little purpose in it," he told her. "The child's already as heartless a creature as any we could make of her. No, Darla, I think there's more to be had from aiming her and letting fly than in binding her to blood and nightfall. She'll wreak lovely havoc in the sunshine, if she's let. It would be a shame to limit the scope of such a weapon."

"But if we made her ours, you could watch her do it. You know how much you love to watch," she purred, draping herself languidly against his back, the heady scent of fresh blood rising from her sharp fingernails.

"She'll do things beyond any that I could see. When you made me, Darla, you killed a boy and made a monster. But she's as heartless as any demon while still having a heartbeat; do you see the irony of it? It gives her an extra edge that no vampire could ever have. She's pure cruelty in spite of herself, which makes her that much more a monster. I would never dream of limiting such a perfect creature - not even for the pleasure of watching her work."

Darla took his face by the chin, turning him, and then kissed him hard enough to draw blood. "My sensitive boy," she said, licking her fangs, "always the aesthete. Very well, then. Leave your living monster, and come to bed with me. I can taste her sex on your mouth."

In their bedchamber, he unlaced her gown while she unpinned her hair, putting the gems and ornaments carefully by. So circumspect, so proper, so elegant she was. Angelus let his mind wander, as he loosened the cords, to the place where Becky Sharp was doubtless sleeping in wild abandon, half out of her gown, her paint smudged and dusty. Or perhaps she'd returned to her seminary already, and was washing a night's worth of sex and debauchery off of her small lithe body, preparing to resume a mask of sheltered innocence and empty conventionality. She would, he thought, wear it splendidly.


End file.
